Model Drawing

The Singapore Math model drawing workshop I took last week went from 11am to 5pm (with few breaks in between). While this schedule was kind of exhausting, I think I prefer it to attending several shorter workshops in a single day. By focusing completing on model drawing, I really got to practice with the approach, and I have already started planning how to incorporate Singapore Math model drawing into my classroom this year. In fact, it inspired a Donors Choose project.

During the workshop, the presenter, Anni Stipek (who was incredibly engaging and informative) shared the way that she did daily problem solving by having each student get a sticker on which she had printed the problem of the day. They would put the stickers in their notebooks, and then use model drawing to solve. She would dedicate 15 minutes every day to work time and follow up discussion.

Model drawing is effective because it uses the relative size of the blocks to indicate the relationship between quantities in the problem. The use of modeling also gives structure to the steps of problem solving. There are many great websites (and resources) that describe Singapore Math model drawing, but I will summarize the steps that I thought were so useful to show how student could solve two different problems:

I think those questions are pretty challenging but Singapore Math model drawing makes them easier to solve.

These are some Singapore Math model drawing resources if you’re interested:

• http://www.thinkingblocks.com/ (This is interactive!)
• http://www.thesingaporemaths.com/ (This has a lot of sample problems!)

There are two different publishers of the Singapore Math curriculum in English:

• http://www.greatsource.com/singaporemath/
• http://www.singaporemath.com/